we used to tax the shit out of the wealthy
and I remember what that was like
Sam Pizzigati has a great piece up at inequality.org:
Once upon a time, the United States seriously taxed the nation’s rich. You remember that time? Probably not. To have a personal memory of that tax-the-rich era, you now have to be well into your seventies.
I was born in 1957, when the top tax rate was 90%. I have no memory of that, of course, but I do remember what things were like in the 1960s, when the top margin was 70%, which brings me to the point I want to make.
most Americans alive today don’t know what it’s like to live in a country where the rich pay their fair share of taxes. I do. construction projects were everywhere. everything was brand new. the grade school I attended was brand new. my middle school was brand new. Route 80 came through town, cutting an hour off the 60-mile drive to New York City. communication satellites. moon rockets. the earliest iterations of what would become the internet. all paid for with tax dollars paid by our country’s wealthiest.
beginning with Reagan, 50 years of wingnut propaganda have convinced two generations of Americans that government that does fuck-all to help its citizens is normal.
let me assure you, it’s not normal. every other wealthy country looks at us and wonders why we’re so fucking nuts.
wealth doesn’t voluntarily trickle down. wealth has had 50 years to trickle down, and it hasn’t yet and it isn’t going to magically start any time soon.
here’s what I find most troublesome: my generation will die off in a couple of decades and if things don’t change, there will be no one alive who remembers the possibilities of a fully-funded government.
an America with crumbling infrastructure and uncaring government will be the permanent norm.
I’m just a loudmouth on the internet. I don’t have a solution to this. but I hope to fuck that someone somewhere does
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note: yes, I am well aware that my experiences as a child were filtered through the lens of being a middle class white kid and I know that racist urban planner fuckfaces like Robert Moses were deliberately working to make sure that minorities were denied any piece of the pie. fuck them and fuck their rotting legacies. but perhaps some day we can all live in a world where the rich pay their fair share and this time, everyone benefits
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ps: sorry to have gone so long without a new post. I’ve been laid low by something which repeated testing insists is not COVID, and for the last ten days brain has refused to string together anything longer than a tweet-length thought. but I’m here, I’m feeling much better now and will be back to posting regularly
I remember those days too. Thanks for reminding us that money is power and the wealthiest among us have used their influence and lobbying power to support politicians who sell their ‘trickle’ down bullshit for all these years. Believing that corporations and rich people are going to spread their wealth to their workers or those in need has always been nonsense. MAKES ME SO MAD! 🤬
The billionaires and multi-millionaires who fund the Republican Party are opposed to being part of a progressive income tax system that would require them to pay a tax based upon a substantial share of the range of their vast wealth and compensation, allow environmental and corporate regulation, and live in a democracy they can't fully control. They want to be free to plunder, pollute, and corrupt our government until it functions almost exclusively for their benefit. I'm referring to many of the 10% of Americans who own 90% of America's corporate wealth, and the relatively few billionaires and multi-millionaires who fund and control the R Party. It may come down to not more than 100 people.
When you realize the 2017 Republican Tax Act is still in place, and analyze the radical, anti-undemocratic, legislative function of the Republican majority of the Supreme Court over the last few decades, they are closing in on achieving their objectives. The SCOTUS has gutted existing voting laws which allow State's to execute laws that allow voter suppression and gerrymandering. Slim majorities in the Senate , and now the House, plus the Electoral Collage make R influence hard to overcome, despite Dems consistently winning the popular Presidential vote over the last 20 years.
This brings us to the nature and composition of the R Party and why Republicans have more recently focused on detailed group and individual data targeting of religious, racial populations, and
minorities, increased radio and T.V. platforms covering all 50 states 24/7, fictional school grievances, totalitarian social control solutions like book banning and the autocratic idealization over democracy (a word Trump never used), rather than their traditional positions of lower taxes, a balanced budget, and limiting the size of government which they obviously never really believed and can no longer trick most Americans with given their behavior when in power.
Most Americans would agree that Trump's promise of a middle-class tax cut that would "hurt the wealthy", cause unrealistic economic growth, pay for itself, and eliminate the Fed debt and the deficits in eight years was a lie of equal magnitude to his lie he won the election. The R Party is on record as the party that consistently underfunds and attempts to privatize public education. Moreover, Republicans view a well-educated and informed society as a threat to their autocratic goals, right-wing propaganda, and misinformation. Their interest in education is limited to a trained workforce for business, downplaying the the importance of a liberal education, stratifying educational opportunity, and profiting off of education.
Contrary to recognizing Climate Change as an existential threat, Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord, and did everything in his power to do away with environmental regulation, instead of addressing the existential imperative of transitioning from fossil fuel based economy to a green based economy. In fact, the R position on CC was that it is a "hoax." and infrastructure is only something you talk about but never address. Thousands of American families will pay the price of death, cancer, respiratory diseases, and birth defects as a result of Trump turning the EPA into a chemical war machine that attacked Americans, while ignoring the clean-up of past catastrophes.
Despite Republican ideology, tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations have been shown to have no relationship to economic growth and always end in a range of corporate welfare programs, higher debt, inflation, recession, widening income and wealth gaps, unaddressed or under addressed critical challenges, and more and bigger billionaires funding a plutocratic State. If the truth were told, by addressing our critical challenges like infrastructure investment, climate change mediation, affordable healthcare, and immigration reform, we would have a thriving and sustainable economy instead of living on the brink of catastrophic disasters. The failure to address these critical issues should be quantified and factored into our Federal debt total so we would have a better idea of our direction, progress, and the quality of the leaders we are electing, rather than judging them by their bluster and Party identity. Ron DeSantis, the Governor of Florida, is a perfect example of a Republican billionaire owned puppet. His entire State budget is 105 billion, but Hurricane Ian just caused 258 billion in estimated damages. While the State feuds with Disneyland, bans book, and supports every right-wing idea that comes down the pike. What used to be a purple state is now an R gerrymandered state. Moreover, in Florida the poor pay the highest income tax rates and the rich pay the lowest. Their Plan B is to mooch off the Fed government when any disasters strike, and for DeSantis is to pray the next hurricane misses his billionaire infested paradise, before the 2024 Presidential election. In the meantime a lot of Floridians will be distracted by the fictional culture threats DeSantis repeats, to keep people distracted from their increasing insurance premiums, if they can get insurance.
There's a reason Trump put his school records, business failures, and taxes under legal lock and key and it wasn't because he was proud of them. Clearly, any business success he experienced was largely the result of his vast lifetime inheritance, inflation, and Russian money laundering, and after he blew all of that as a "star" in a TV show where he played a successful business boss who fired people. He undoubtedly made more as POTUS through grifting and corruptly trading American Foreign Policy for
"goodwill" funds for his family and himself.
As Thom pointed out there are many reasons for the Republican embrace of racism, anti-Semitism, and what ever anti-isms Republican politicians think will fly. However, in all cases their prejudices are rewarded by their sponsors and utilized in place of constructive policies. If they told the truth about who they represent Republicans would have no chance of being elected. When a politician doesn't address major issues and/or calls them hoaxes it is their tell that their agenda is to ignore the interests of Americans, by appealing to our the worst instincts and spreading misinformation, while they funnel our tax dollars to their sponsors and themselves. Trump created 10 trillion of new debt without addressing our critical challenges and while undercutting our allies, breaking our commitments, trying to hide a Pandemic, and appeasing Russia, to our and our allies detriment. The Republicans required another 10 trillion Fed "backstop" to avoid a Great Depression, in just four years of their reign. Additionally, there are the messes, deferred maintenance, and greater divisiveness they left. For example, Russia wouldn't have pursued a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, if Trump had not given Putin a free pass in the Middle East and control over the global oil price, to bolster his reelection chances:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/08/wagner-group-libya-oil-russia-war/
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/10/17/donald-trumps-betrayal-of-the-kurds-is-a-blow-to-americas-credibility
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-betrayed-us-fleeing-kurds-condemn-u-s-decision-to-leave-syria
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/steve-chapman/ct-column-trump-oil-deal-gas-pricesi-chapman-20200415-iwwn3cpegngo5krsm6tfdycqvy-story.html
Trump's foreign policy failures require further investigation. No one can make the case he was good for America or our relationship with the rest of the world except Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and the American Oil and Chemical Industries, and their multi-billionaire owners.